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If This Bill Passes, Federal Law Will Mandate Consent Education in Public Schools

by FEMINIST NEWSWIRE on Feb 26, 2015 • 1:56 PM

Right now, federal law does not require health or sex education to include sexual assault prevention – but that could change with a new bill introduced by Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Tim Kaine (D-VA).

via Gary Knight

The Teach Safe Relationships Act of 2015, which was introduced earlier this month, would require all public secondary schools in the country to include teaching “safe relationship behavior” in order to help prevent domestic violence and sexual assault. Women between 16 and 24 experience the highest rate of intimate partner violence, making the bill particularly important in ending an epidemic of sexual violence.

McCaskill, who has also pushed legislation to combat military sexual assault, noted that sexual assault prevention starts young. “One thing we’ve learned in our work to curb sexual violence on campuses and in the military is that many young people learn about sex and relationships before they turn 18,” she said in a recent statement. “And one of the most effective ways to prevent sexual violence among adults is to educate our kids at a younger age.”

She was echoed by Kaine. “Education can be a key tool to increase public safety by raising awareness and helping to prevent sexual assault and domestic violence, but many students are leaving high school without learning about these crimes that disproportionately impact young people,” he said in a press release. “With the alarming statistics on the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses and in communities across the country, secondary schools should play a role in promoting safe relationship behavior and teaching students about sexual assault and dating violence.”

The Act came after Sen. Kaine met with members of One Less, a University of Virginia group that advocates for rape and sexual assault survivors. UVA’s policies surrounding campus sexual assault have been in the spotlight since Rolling Stone released an article about the college’s mishandling of a gang rape.

Study: College athletes are more likely to gang rape

Nine things you may not have known about college sexual assault, according to an insurance company

February 26, 20157:45PM ET

by Claire Gordon

In the world of higher education, sexual assault is a legal minefield. Alleged victims and accused rapists alike claim their colleges botch cases – charging breach of contract, negligence, discrimination, defamation and due process violations – and in numbers like never before.

For United Educators, which offers liability insurance to schools, student-on-student sexual assault represents the third-costliest category of claims, behind employment practices and slips, trips and falls.

Last month, the company released an analysis of all the sexual assault reports at its client colleges from 2011 to 2013, excluding ones that involved faculty. The final data set was 305 cases from 104 colleges and universities. (See its last report on campus sexual assault here.) And unlike most campus assault surveys that are based on self-reports, UE has information on both the alleged victims and the men they accused (99 percent of perpetrators in the study are men) and how the schools responded. It’s the kind of study only an insurance company could do.

Here are nine of UE’s conclusions that jumped out from the report:

Athletes are more likely to gang rape

College athletes aren’t accused more often of rape, according to this data. They represent 15 percent of accused perpetrators in the study, roughly their slice of the student population, according to UE. But they made up 40 percent of multiple-perpetrator attacks reported to schools. In other words, athletes were almost three times as likely to be involved in gang assault. The report points to a “culture that promotes hyper-masculinity, sexual aggression and excessive alcohol consumption.” In all, 10 percent of the sexual assault reports UE examined involved more than one perpetrator. But this could be an overrepresentation of their actual proportion on campus, as alleged victims may be more inclined to report these kinds of attacks.

Fraternity members are more likely to serial offend

Like athletes, fraternity members weren’t more likely to be accused of sexual assault, according to this analysis. Fraternity members made up 10 percent of accused perpetrators in the study, approximately the same percentage of college men who go Greek. But they made up 24 percent of repeat perpetrators. (Athletes made up another 20 percent.) All in all, 1 in 5 alleged assailants in the study were repeat offenders.

Drinking increases a man’s likelihood of raping

Alleged perpetrators, like alleged victims, were drinking in a majority of incidents analyzed. In 11 percent of “physical force” assaults, the perpetrator was drinking and the victim was not. That was also true for 7 percent of “failed consent” cases, where the man is accused of inferring consent from silence or lack of resistance.

According to UE, this suggests that drinking enables some students “to more easily use force to obtain sex when their partner refuses” and “contributes to misinterpreting sexual interest or ignoring their partner’s hesitation.”

It’s well-known that freshman girls are the most vulnerable to sexual assault; their first few weeks on campus are grimly dubbed “the red zone.” But the numbers are staggering. More than half of alleged victims in these reports were freshmen; adding in sophomores brings the total close to three quarters. And of reported gang assaults, freshmen accounted for 88 percent of the alleged victims.

Many didn’t call it rape

Some sexual assault studies, such as 2007’s government-backed Campus Sexual Assault study, which produced the famous statistic that 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted in college, have been criticized for avoiding the terms “sexual assault” or “rape” in their survey questions and using the legal definitions instead, turning droves of young women into statistical “victims” who never considered themselves victims at all.

Every study that’s looked at this point has found that college women who’ve been legally raped often don’t label what happened to them as rape. This fact is damning, infuriating or dismaying, depending on whom you ask. In the UE report, 4 in 10 alleged victims delayed reporting to their schools an average of 11 months; most of these students only labeled their experience sexual assault after talking to friends or attending a training session. A good portion of their alleged perpetrators likely didn’t consider it sexual assault either, according to other research.

Colleges clear the perpetrators in 36 percent of decisions

Under the Title IX federal civil rights statute, schools are required to use a “preponderance of the evidence” standard in their adjudications, or “more likely than not” – a far lower standard than beyond a reasonable doubt. Still, in UE’s sample, more than one-third of alleged victims don’t persuade their college’s disciplinary board.

Assuming (safely) that more than one-third of alleged victims did not concoct allegations, this means many women were either treated unfairly, or there wasn’t enough evidence to tip the scale against the accused. UE emphasizes the point:

“[Colleges and universities] respond to cases of sexual assault that the criminal justice system often considers too difficult to succeed at trial and obtain a conviction… involv[ing] little or no forensic evidence, delays in reporting, use of alcohol, and differing accounts of consent.”

Of students found responsible, 43 percent are expelled

A string of media reports have highlighted what are seen as extremely light sanctions for some alleged rapists, like writing a book report or watching an educational video. But the insurance company study suggests this isn’t commonplace. Of men found responsible for sexual assault, 82 percent were suspended or expelled. On the flipside, 18 percent of men found responsible for an assault were allowed to continue their studies uninterrupted and 57 percent were allowed to graduate.

Alleged perpetrators file more lawsuits than alleged victims

Of the cases analyzed by UE, alleged perpetrators filed 50 percent more lawsuits than alleged victims. The specter of alleged offender lawsuits has made some schools squeamish about finding men responsible and sanctioning them. In the harshest calculus, some schools may consider it cheaper to hurt the alleged victim. But in UE’s numbers, that math doesn’t work, at least not anymore.

Alleged victims are more of an insurance liability

Litigation brought by victims accounted for a whopping 84 percent, or $14.3 million, of the total payouts in this study. How is this possible? It could be that victims’ lawsuits see greater payouts. (UE wouldn’t break down that data.) But it’s also thanks to students filing Title IX complaints with the federal government. Schools faced more Title IX complaints than perpetrator and victim lawsuits combined, UE found, and all of them were brought by victims. Across the country, close to 100 colleges and universities are under federal investigation for Title IX sexual violence issues.

A school has never lost its federal funding for violating Title IX (the most severe theoretical punishment), but that doesn’t mean the costs of a Title IX complaint aren’t real. There are lawyers to pay along with the cost of reforms prescribed by the government. Plus, there are damages UE doesn’t tally: administrators’ time, crisis PR teams, drops in alumni donations and high schoolers deciding not to apply.

“Women have leveraged very low cost ways to get administrators to pay attention,” according to Brett Sokolow, the CEO of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, who’s been helping colleges grapple with campus assault for 15-plus years. “It’s very clever. And it’s very costly.”

My youngest grandson is 5 years old, and in pre-school. He has lived his entire life in conservative areas, first in Arkansas, now in Oklahoma. I talked to his mother today, and she told me that when he came home from school today, the following conversation took place:

“Mom, Mr. Obama is our President, did you know that?”

“Yes, honey, I did know that. Did you know that he’s our First President of Color?”

“No, mommy! He’s not the First President! And he’s not the President for Color, he’s the President of All of Us!”

A 5-year-old can get that, but Congress, or at least many Republicans, apparently can’t.

Obama is the first President of Color, but to the youngest generation, that doesn’t matter. What matters is: He’s President of America. Period.

Color is irrelevant, at my grandson’s age, because at 5, he has not been taught to hate people who look differently than he does, or who worship differently than he does, or who worship not at all. At 5, we’re all just People. Nothing more, nothing less. Just People.

Think of what a wonderful world it could be, if he were never taught that all people whose skin has a different hue are dangerous or stupid or lazy or out to get him in some undefined way. Think of what a wonderful world it could be, if he were never taught that his God hates the way other people worship the same God and that they will be punished for believing differently. Think of what a wonderful world it could be, if he were never taught that all people in foreign lands, or whose parents or grandparents come from foreign lands, want to destroy our country, or hurt his family.

What would the world be like if we never taught our children to hate, or to fear or to be intolerant and prejudiced? Can you imagine such a world?

It’s hard, looking at the news and beheadings and bombings and riots and protests, to imagine a world without hatred being taught to children.

But I, for one, think it’s worth trying.

Let us teach all children that they are beautiful and intelligent. Let us teach them that they have good ideas. Let’s not discourage them from having friends who are different. Let us live in such a way that they will have good role models. Let us stop Nazi imitators and the KKK. Let us punish them for every crime they commit.

Let us teach that every color in the woods, the beach, in our gardens, or in our skin, is there because of the way light rays bend. Let’s show them that there is beautiful color everywhere in the world. No color is more important than another and no color is to ever be hated.

If you really stop and think about it, what color is Divinity? Caucasian, black, brown, asian, or a blending of colors like my paint palette? What if Your God and or mine has no color? What if God, Divinity is pure energy and is colorless?

What a person is and how they live their lives is what is really important. Good people are not Caucasian, partly good are not Asian and Black people are not bad people.

More than half of the 1.4 million people living in Bahrain are thought to be migrant workers, journeying from South Asia and elsewhere to the Persian Gulf state because of economic factors. Many end up in low-paid, menial work once they are there, living a very different life compared with the Bahrainis around them.

Last week, a young Bahraini named Yousif Hassan decided to show the gulf between his life and that of migrant workers, by living a “day in the life” of a low-paid convenience store worker. With the help of some friends, he filmed his day.

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This poem grabbed me. I wasn’t thinking about Death, but the beauty of the words — the possibility of it — captured my imagination today.

We all will face Death, one day — some of us sooner than others — but how we face it, how we accept it or fight it, can be as important as how we live on the way there.

Death is scary. It isn’t something I want to do, any time soon — I have grandchildren to watch grow up, great-grandchildren to welcome many years from now — but when it comes, it would be nice to think it would be like this poem. Nice to think that those I’ve loved and lost were welcomed to the Other Side in so gentle and beautiful a fashion.

A tree is awash in autumn color as the moon rises over the White House on election night, November 08.
REUTERS

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In the wake of the killings of unarmed black men and boys and the outrageous failure to prosecute their killers, Hank Johnson is introducing the Grand Jury Reform Act. This bill will prohibit the use of a grand jury when determining whether to prosecute a police officer in the event of a death. The status quo isn’t working. The evidence is clear. The people are demanding a real response from their elected leaders.

I am a retired widow with 4 kids and 9 grands. I worked as a nurse, and in Domestic Violence, and many non-profits, I was a donor health counselor for the American Red Cross and am a certified HIV counselor. I worked as a counselor and I have been a make-up artist and selling specialists for several American designers. I love life. I am very spiritual. I grew up in 50's and 60's and truly am the idealistic rebel which is the name of my blog. I love music, books, reading, Kindle, beauty. I am a photographer and an artist. I believe in making the world better one day at a time. I am now living in Asheville, NC.